Strategic Renewal: Past Research,Theoretical Tensions and Future Challenges

Strategic renewal has become a prominent theme in a variety of organization and management research domains in recent years. It refers to the process that allows organizations to alter their path dependence by transforming their strategic intent and capabilities. With contributions from an increasing range of theoretical perspectives and research contexts, the strategic renewal literature has become fragmented and lacks common definitions and conceptual clarity, which prevent cross‐fertilization and harm further development. This study systematically reviews the various literature streams on strategic renewal to provide a more integrative perspective. The authors identify three key theoretical tensions at the heart of strategic renewal research, namely learning vs. resource, induced vs. autonomous, and co‐alignment vs. co‐creation. By exploring these key tensions, the authors define strategic renewal's conceptual core, identify gaps in the past literature, and provide guidance for future research.     

Gender, Nonstandard Work Schedules, and Marital Quality

Relatively few studies have focused on the effects of working late and rotating shifts on marital dynamics. This study addressed the limitations of prior studies by sampling from a sector of the economy (i.e., grocery and drug store workers) where shift work and rotating schedules were common, and by controlling for numerous accompanying disruptive effects of shift work on marital quality. Results show that working late shifts reduces marital quality among men, whereas among women, job-family spillover explained away marital quality effects of working rotating schedules. These results suggest that more than men, women remain largely responsible for family life irrespective of work schedules, yet further research on how family lives are affected by work schedules is needed.     

User acceptance of cooperative maneuver-based driving--a summary of three studies

Modern cars offer drivers support with the help of a number of driver assistance systems. Those systems aim to relieve drivers through assumption of sub parts of the driving task (e.g. in case of an Adaptive Cruise Control by regulation of vehicle speed and time gap to preceding vehicle). Today, systems are controlled and monitored separately which leads to efforts to combine the functionality of all systems in an overlying assistance for drivers. The approach of the University of Technology Darmstadt is called Conduct-by-Wire and can be seen as a cooperative maneuver-based driving paradigm, where the driver gives maneuver command to the systems which are automatically executed. This paper summarizes the results of three studies which investigated the user acceptance of this driving paradigm. Overall, it can be said that the acceptance of the system depends on personal traits of the driver and on the driving situation. Almost all participants are willing to use Conduct-by- Wire for routine tasks such as commuting, which makes the systems interesting for company cars. Still, there remain a number of drivers who are not willing to use such a highly automated system at all.     

Bivariate pointing movements on large touch screens: investigating the validity of a refined Fitts' Law

On the basis of three empirical studies Fitts' Law was refined for bivariate pointing tasks on large touch screens. In the first study different target width parameters were investigated. The second study considered the effect of the motion angle. Based on the results of the two studies a refined model for movement time in human-computer interaction was formulated. A third study, which is described here in detail, concerns the validation of the refined model. For the validation study 20 subjects had to execute a bivariate pointing task on a large touch screen. In the experimental task 250 rectangular target objects were displayed at a randomly chosen position on the screen covering a broad range of ID values (ID= [1.01; 4.88]). Compared to existing refinements of Fitts' Law, the new model shows highest predictive validity. A promising field of application of the model is the ergonomic design and evaluation of project management software. By using the refined model, software designers can calculate a priori the appropriate angular position and the size of buttons, menus or icons.     

A small world on feet of clay? A comparison of empirical small-world studies against best-practice criteria

Small-world studies were introduced by Milgram and others in the 1960s and 1970s. These studies, and a majority of variants conducted by others, display a number of methodological weaknesses that bias their results. While no explicit methodological standard exists for these studies, here I derive a number of best-practice criteria for small-world studies by pointing out mistakes of previous studies, and by applying methodological standards from other empirical research areas. Improving the methodology of letter referral studies is important, because such studies could still be useful in a number of contexts today, especially for the exploration of factors affecting targeted search processes.     

Politicized expertise – an analysis of the political dimensions of consultants' policy recommendations to developing countries with a case study of McKinsey's advice on REDD+ policies

This article argues that expertise must be seen as politicized. Most of the existing research on the role of experts in policy-making neglects that there are many political factors which influence what and whose expertise is sought and used. This article looks at the role consultants play in shaping public policy in developing countries. Applying concepts from different disciplines a theoretical framework is developed to examine in what ways such politicized expertise undermines notions of neutrality and legitimacy. This framework is then applied to a case study looking at the advice that McKinsey & Company has given developing countries on their deforestation and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation policies.     

Judgmental overconfidence: Three measures, one bias?

Overconfidence is used to explain various instances of detrimental decision making. In behavioral economic and finance models, it is usually captured by misperceiving the reliability of signals and results in overweighting private information. Empirical tests of these models often fail to find evidence for the predicted effects of overconfidence. These studies assume, however, that a specific type of overconfidence, i.e. “miscalibration,” captures the underlying trait. We challenge this assumption and borrow the psychological methodology of single-cue probability learning to obtain a direct measure for misperceiving signal reliability. Our findings indicate that the perception of signal precision and measures of miscalibration are unrelated. We thus conclude that in order to test the theoretical predictions of the overconfidence literature in economics and finance, one cannot rely on the well-established miscalibration bias.     

The Effects of Ethnic Minority Adolescents' Ethnic Self‐Identification on Friendship Selection

This study investigated the effects of ethnic minority adolescents' ethnic self‐identification (host country, dual, or heritage country) on friendship choices among ethnic majority and minority peers. Hypotheses were derived from similarity–attraction and social identity theory and tested using longitudinal social network data from 1,004 middle school students (five schools) in Germany. Results showed that ethnic minority adolescents' ethnic self‐identification affected friendship selection beyond ethnic homophily. While host country and dual identification was beneficial with respect to friendships with both ethnic majority and minority peers, heritage country identification was detrimental to relations with both of them.     

„Da gibt es Sachen,die macht man einfach nicht“ – Deutungsmuster von Banken im Kontext von Nachhaltigkeit und Krise

Banks in Germany are experiencing a profound legitimacy crisis. In the wake of financial and economic crises, failures, and bailouts, as well as new oversight and stricter regulations, banks have lost the reputation and trust they once had. The present article uses an analysis of interpretative patterns to examine how banks seek to legitimize themselves in times of crisis, with reference to sustainability as a guiding principle of society. Following the concept of social legitimacy by new institutionalism in sociology, and based on discursive interviews with 18 representatives of German banks, we reconstructed three interpretative patterns: a) the differentiation from “bad” banks, which abandons profit-maximizing business models and promotes the moral superiority of sustainable banking, b) responsibility for society, which promotes the role and responsibility of banks as socially relevant actors that spur social change, and c) “right” return, whereby banks seek an appropriate relationship between their value orientation and a return on investments. Although a return on investment is economically necessary and confers legitimacy, it may not be understood as an end in itself. Banks discredited during the crisis can refocus on a banking model which promises social legitimacy by referring to sustainability.